5 Tips for Capturing Light and Shadow in a Painting

29 October 2018

Whether you use watercolour, acrylic or oil paint to create your art, capturing the light in a painting (in a realistic looking way) can be tricky. The thing is, you can’t actually paint light – you can only paint what it does. Light in a painting is a crucial part of any work of art, one that will add life, a touch of reality and will literally enlighten the main focus of a painting.

If we are to paint objects or landscapes as they appear to us, we must first understand how light - and subsequently shadow - interacts with an object, figure or landscape. To translate this into a painting, highlights are used to portray the areas where light hits an object, whilst darker hues are used to illustrate the contrasting shadows.

Creating the right colour palette to illustrate highlights and shadows takes time and thought. The first step to painting a scene where light and shadow come into play is to start with a sketch. From here, the colours needed to define the lighting will become more obvious. Here are a few tips to get you started on depicting light and shadow through a painting.

 

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1. Understand how light behaves

Depending on what you’re painting, it can be tricky to depict shadow if you don’t have one single light source. Light behaves predictably; it always travels in a straight line. But if you’re trying to sketch and paint an indoor scene where you have light coming from multiple sources – windows, ceiling lights and lamps – it can become difficult to achieve a realistic, three dimensional picture.

Painting the illusion of form when there’s multiple light sources is difficult because the effect of the lighting is less defined, softer, and can introduce shadows that don’t behave consistently with the object in focus.

The easiest way to learn to paint form and shadow is to have one harsh source of light shine on the objects in focus. Shadows will be clearly defined, and it will become obvious when a light source produces shadows with a sharp or blurred edge, which can be translated into realistic paintings. As a general rule, harsh light will create shadows with sharp, crisp edges, whilst softer light will produce shadows with blurred edges.

2. Sketch and define

Now that the main focus and lighting angles of the painting are defined, you can start sketching and filling in the surrounding elements. Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to sketch every single detail of the painting; keep it simple, as there are still more steps to come. This exercise is just to keep defining light and shade.

3. Choose the right colour shades

As we touched on previously, getting the colour right when painting highlights involves time and thought.

Choosing colour for shadows

For shadows, most of us may think that black is the go-to colour for depicting shadow, however this isn’t the case. When choosing colours to paint shadow, the complementary colour to the object will depict the most realistic shadow. Usually dark greens, purples and blues are the best, so whichever one complements the subject at hand should be used.

If you think that a shade of black will work best, make sure it is a mixed chromatic black rather than true black, as this will provide more depth and realism.

Choosing colour for highlights

For creating highlights on the subject of your painting (to which you are adding light), you will need to experiment a little to get the tones correct. For example, if you’re adding highlights to a red object, a dash of yellow might work well to depict the light source. You can also add white to lighten a colour, but keep in mind that this can reduce the vibrancy, so play around with your palette to see what works best.

4. Putting theory into practice

Now that you’ve sketched and defined your palette, it’s time to start painting. Start with blocking out the subject, for example, if you’re focusing on painting an autumn tree amongst a landscape, start by painting the reds, yellows and oranges of the autumn leaves. Everything outside of this is secondary, so it’s important that the autumn trees are the brightest to remain the focal point.

Before adding colours to the secondary areas of the painting, it might be useful to paint an edge around the trees that marks the transition between colours. Then blend these edges into the background – or secondary – areas of your painting. 

Refer to the step-by-step guide below to see how this process can evolve from sketch to complete landscape that captures light and shadow.

Image source: John D. Cogan via Lori McNee Art & Fine Art Tips

Squinting is a good way to assess your progress with the painting. It’ll help you understand and pinpoint what stands out the most; is it the focal subject and the lighting? If it is, then you know you’re on the right track. If secondary areas and shadows are what stands out the most, tweak the piece so it’s focused on light rather than shadow.

5. Finishing off

After you’ve completed all the steps outlined above, finishing off the painting shouldn’t be a lengthy process. You can add little touches of paint here and there, maybe a tad of yellow to brighten up some of the enlightened objects of the painting, and perhaps some additional shadows if you’re painting a scene with lots of elements.

Create depth with highlights and shadows

Capturing light in a painting is not the easiest task, but with a little practice and experimentation, the process should become more intuitive with time. You’ll begin to understand which colours work best with others, in terms of both highlighting objects and painting their complementary shadows. Remember, it’s all about understanding the light sources, defining shadows and fine-tuning your colour palette.

If you have any questions regarding how to paint light and shadow, or are in the hunt for any specific supplies, don’t hesitate to contact us. Here at Eckersley’s, we’re always keen to support our customers through their creative processes and provide advice on anything and everything art related.

 

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